It’s not quite Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s something. Pyramid is giant farming clock:
Benfer stumbled across the temple while trawling through a green valley floor in search of information about ancient diets. Working with a number of Peruvian colleagues, he unearthed a 30ft-high pyramid that had once been brightly painted red and white. He believes that it served its community, known as the Kotosh people, for 800 years.The 20-acre site is dominated by two buildings. The northern pyramid, which Benfer has called the Temple of the Fox after a painting of the animal, is built around a priests’ platform.
This points at 114 degrees directly to an 8ft tall carved head on a mountain ridge nearly 200ft away. On December 21 each year, just before the local River Chillon starts flooding, a constellation known to Andeans as the fox swings into the sightline. According to Andean myth, the fox is the creature that taught farmers how to cultivate plants.
To the south, another temple holds a scowling clay head, which Benfer believes represents the earth goddess Pachamama. It aligns with stars that line up when the harvest is due to be gathered.